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Annual Duke Lecture to Focus on Arab Spring, Occupy Movements

Sanjeev Khagram will deliver the free, public lecture; reception to follow

Sanjeev Khagram, a public affairs and international studies scholar at the University of Washington, will deliver the annual international comparative studies lecture at Duke University, on Thursday, April 12.The 4:30 p.m. lecture, "From the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street to Greece: The Transnational Political Economy of Government Accountability," will outline the pressures on governments to improve participation, transparency and accountability in the aftermath of last spring's uprisings.The event, to be held in room 136A of the Social Sciences Building on West Campus, is free and open to the public. A reception will follow."Professor Khagram has important things to say about the connections between recent social activism and protest around the world, the actions of governments, and transnational projects and global initiatives occurring at various scales and with different kinds of stakeholders," said Frances Hasso, an associate professor in international comparative studies at Duke.Born in Uganda during the Idi Amin regime, Khagram is Hindu, of Asian-Indian heritage. In addition to his appointment at the University of Washington, Khagram is the Ratan Tata Chaired Visiting Professor in Globalization, Governance, Human Security and Sustainable Development at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India. He was selected as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and was the lead author of the UN Secretary General's Report on the "Impacts of the Global Economic Crisis on the Poor" in 2009.